Thu, Oct 17, 2002 page2

• Conservationists press for laws to save the landscape

  EYESORES Critics say regulations protecting the countryside are inadequate, leading to poorly planned projects that mar national parks

  • By Chiu Yu-Tzu / STAFF REPORTER
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  Ecological conservationists and geological experts yesterday urged the government to establish a legal framework to protect the country's landscape.

  Panelists at a discussion held by the Consumers' Foundation in Taipei yesterday discussed how the law could be used to prevent a repeat of several recent cases in which construction was said to have impaired the landscape in national parks.

  Early this month, the superintendent of the Taroko National Park Headquarters, Yeh Shih-wen (葉世文), was transferred to another post by Premier Yu Shyi-kun, who received a complaint in September about the establishment of radio base stations on Hohuan Mountain, one of the highest mountains in the park.

  On Tuesday, legislators accused the Yangmingshan National Park's management of destroying the mountain's environment by allowing the building of cement constructions near hot springs for the convenience of tourists.

  Lin Jiun-chuan (林俊全), a National Taiwan University geography professor, questioned the Cabinet's decision to reassign Yeh, saying he had an excellent reputation in his field.

  "Actually, Taiwan's precious landscapes have been sacrificed for decades because of unsound regulations," Lin said.

  Yu Ming-kuo (游明國), chairman of the Consumers' Foundation, said that the Taroko case was only the tip of the iceberg and that other national parks were suffering similar problems.

  Yu, who had recently returned from a trip to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, said that mobile-phone operators in the Baltic countries frequently shared sites for their antennas and often used the same masts.

  "But in Taiwan, our national parks headquarters are still fighting against mobile-phone operators two decades after they were established because of the lack of regulations," Yu said.

  In addition to construction in national parks, Yu said, all public construction should be comprehensively evaluated before works starts.

  "The statute regarding city-scapes (都市景觀條例) and the landscape protection law (景觀維護法), now under discussion, would be Taiwan's first steps in preserving landscapes," Yu said.

  Public Construction Commission (PCC) Vice Chairman Kuo Ching-chiang (郭清江) said he was aware that government agencies built unnecessary constructions to use up their budgets, causing irreversible damage to fragile ecological systems.

  Kuo gave as an example the 173km-long National Route 11, which connects Hualien and Taitung counties. He said that widening the route was unnecessary because it was rarely used.

  Beginning last year, Kuo said, any development costing more than NT$50 million needed to be reviewed by the PCC when it was 30 percent complete. He said the government was promoting nature-friendly engineering to minimize the impact development has on the countryside.
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